Fall 2017

Today's Topics

  • UCLA Library Data Archives: who we are and what we do
  • How to search for and access data for research
  • Resources, tools and support available to students at UCLA
  • Publishing and Data Management Plans

UCLA Library Data Archives

Data Archives: Our Services

The Data Archive provides data services that are tied to the data life-cycle.

"Data archiving is a process, not an end state where data is simply turned over to a repository at the conclusion of a study. Rather, data archiving should begin early in a project and incorporate a schedule for depositing products over the course of a project’s life cycle and for the creation and preservation of accurate metadata, ensuring the usability of the research data itself. Such practices would incorporate archiving as part of the research method." Preserving Research Data, Jacobs and Humphrey (2004)

illustration: DatOne Data Life Cycle

illustration: DatOne Data Life Cycle

Data Archives: Our Services and the Data Life Cycle

https://www.library.ucla.edu/location/social-science-data-archive/data-services

Plan

  • Review data sources
  • Help investigate archiving issues, costs, consent and disclosure risks
  • create a data management plan

Collect/Assure

  • Project management and file organization
  • Quality Assurance for collected data and acquisition workflows
  • Consultation on restricted data access and security

Describe

  • Assist with filenames, standard terminology and data dictionaries
  • Document analysis and file manipulations
  • Help identify appropriate standards

Preserve

  • Help with backing up your Data
  • Help with deciding what data to preserve
  • Choosing stable file formats
  • Help identifying suitable repositories

Integration

  • Consider compatability
  • Document steps
  • Capture the provenance of sources

Analysis

  • Help identify appropriate sofware
  • Consultation on coding best practices

Finding Out About Data Sources

  • UCLA Library Data Archive
  • Colleagues
  • Public media (newspapers, news)
  • Social media (twitter, etc)
  • Scholarly literature
  • Government reports and documents
  • Archives and project websites
  • Codebooks, questionnaires
  • Exploration of datasets

Data Sources

Search Strategies and Defining Your Research

  • General to specific; broad to narrow
  • Names of investigators; names of studies
  • Studies described in literature, news and websites

illustration: define your research

How do I know this study useful?

  • Raw data are not eye-readable
  • To decipher data you will use Questionnaires and Codebooks

illustration: Raw Data

What is a Questionnaire?

  • A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents.

  • Questionnaires cover separate topics such as:
    • Preferences (e.g. political party)
    • Behaviors (e.g. food consumption)
    • Facts (e.g. gender)
  • Questionnaires can include indexes or scales:
    • Latent traits (e.g. personality traits)
    • Attitudes (e.g. towards immigration)
    • An index (e.g. Social Economic Status)

Questionnaire: ABC New Poll

illustration: Questionnaire ABC New Poll

What is a Codebook?

  • An overview of the study or dataset
  • Variable names and descriptions
  • Column locations (mostly this is for raw data)

May also include:

  • Test of questions if the data comes from a survey
  • Example of the Questionnaire
  • Detail on who responded to the survey

Codebook: General Social Survey

illustration: codebook #2

Codebook and Raw Data

illustration: Codebook and Raw Data

ICPSR Data Site

ICPSR: Find Data

ICPSR: Register to Access Data

illustration: ICPSR Register

ICPSR: Search by Topics

illustration: ICPSR Search by Topics

ICPSR: Search for and Compare Variables

illustration: ICPSR Search for and Compare Variables

ICPSR: Compare Variables

illustration: ICPSR Compare Variables

ICPSR: Study Page and Data

illustration: ICPSR Study Page and Data#1

ICPSR: Reading About Data

illustration: ICPSR Reading About Data

ICPSR: Publications linked to Data

illustration: ICPSR Publications linked to Data

ICPSR: Publications Linked to Data

illustration: ICPSR Publications Linked to Data

Data Management Plans

  • What is a Data Management Plans
  • Why do I need this?
  • What tools are available to help?

What is a Data Management Plan?

A data management plan is a document that describes what you will do with your data during your research and after you complete your research.

Why do you need this?

Getting Help with Data Management Plans

  • Data Archive
  • ICPSR

Questions?

illustration: Questions

Problems ?

The Data Archive is here to help